The successful development of modern gas sensing technologies requires high sensitivity and selectivity coupled to cost effectiveness, which implies the necessity to miniaturize devices while reducing the amount of sensing material. The appealing alternative of integrating nanoparticles of a porous metal–organic framework (MOF) onto capacitive sensors based on interdigitated electrode (IDE) chips is presented. We report the deposition of MIL-96­(Al) MOF thin films via the Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) method on the IDE chips, which allowed the study of their gas/vapor sensing properties. First, sorption studies of several organic vapors like methanol, toluene, chloroform, etc. were conducted on bulk MOF. The sorption data revealed that MIL-96­(Al) presents high affinity toward water and methanol. Later on, ordered LB monolayer films of MIL-96­(Al) particles of ∼200 nm were successfully deposited onto IDE chips with homogeneous coverage of the surface in comparison to conventional thin film fabrication techniques such as drop-casting. The sensing tests showed that MOF LB films were selective for water and methanol, and short response/recovery times were achieved. Finally, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of a porous thin film of Parylene C (thickness ∼250–300 nm) was performed on top of the MOF LB films to fabricate a thin selective layer. The sensing results showed an increase in the water selectivity and sensitivity, while those of methanol showed a huge decrease. These results prove the feasibility of the LB technique for the fabrication of ordered MOF thin films onto IDE chips using very small MOF quantities.

The increase in demand and popularity of smart textiles brings new and innovative ideas to develop a diverse range of textile-based devices for our daily life applications. Smart textile-based sensors (TEX sensors) become attractive due to the potential to replace current solid-state sensor devices with flexible and wearable devices. We have developed a smart textile sensor for humidity detection using a metal–organic framework (MOF) as an active thin-film layer. We show for the first time the use of the Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) technique for the deposition of a MIL-96(Al) MOF thin film directly onto the fabrics containing interdigitated textile electrodes for the fabrication of a highly selective humidity sensor. The humidity sensors were made from two different types of textiles, namely, linen and cotton, with the linen-based sensor giving the best response due to better coverage of MOF. The TEX sensor showed a reproducible response after multiple cycles of measurements. After 3 weeks of storage, the sensor showed a moderate decrease in response. Moreover, TEX sensors showed a high level of selectivity for the detection of water vapors in the presence of several volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Interestingly, the selectivity is superior to some of the previously reported MOF-coated solid-state interdigitated electrode devices and textile sensors. The method herein described is generic and can be extended to other textiles and coating materials for the detection of toxic gases and vapors.

Organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) are emerging as competitive candidates for gas sensing applications due to the ease of their fabrication process combined with the ability to readily fine-tune the properties of organic semiconductors. Nevertheless, some key challenges remain to be addressed, such as material degradation, low sensitivity, and poor selectivity toward toxic gases. Appropriately, a heterojunction combination of different sensing layers with multifunctional capabilities offers great potential to overcome these problems. Here, a novel and highly sensitive receptor layer is proposed encompassing a porous 3D metal–organic framework (MOF) based on isostructural-fluorinated MOFs acting as an NO2 specific preconcentrator, on the surface of a stable and ultrathin PDVT-10 organic semiconductor on an OFET platform. Here, with this proposed combination we have unveiled an unprecedented 700% increase in sensitivity toward NO2 analyte in contrast to the pristine PDVT-10. The resultant combination for this OFET device exhibits a remarkable lowest detection limit of 8.25 ppb, a sensitivity of 680 nA/ppb, and good stability over a period of 6 months under normal laboratory conditions. Further, a negligible response (4.232 nA/%RH) toward humidity in the range of 5%–90% relative humidity was demonstrated using this combination. Markedly, the obtained results support the use of the proposed novel strategy to achieve an excellent sensing performance with an OFET platform.

We report an amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) based toxic gas detection system. The microsystem contains an IGZO thin film transistor (TFT) as a sensing element and exhibits remarkable selectivity and sensitivity to low concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2). In contrast to existing metal oxide based gas sensors, which are active either at high temperature or with light activation, the developed IGZO TFT sensor is operable at room temperature and requires only visible light activation to revive the sensor after exposure to NO2. Furthermore, we demonstrate air-stable sensors with an experimental limit of detection of 100 ppb. This is the first report on metal oxide TFT gas sensors without heating or continuous light activation. Unlike most existing gas sensing systems that take care of identifying the analytes alone, the developed IGZO microsystem not only quantifies NO2 gas concentration but also yields 5-bit digital output. The compact microsystem incorporating readout and analog to digital conversion modules developed using only two TFTs, paves the way for inexpensive toxic gas monitoring systems.

Neuromorphic vision sensors have been extremely beneficial in developing energy-efficient intelligent systems for robotics and privacy-preserving security applications. There is a dire need for devices to mimic the retina’s photoreceptors that encode the light illumination into a sequence of spikes to develop such sensors. Herein, we develop a hybrid perovskite-based flexible photoreceptor whose capacitance changes proportionally to the light intensity mimicking the retina’s rod cells, paving the way for developing an efficient artificial retina network. The proposed device constitutes a hybrid nanocomposite of perovskites (methyl-ammonium lead bromide) and the ferroelectric terpolymer (polyvinylidene fluoride trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene). A metal-insulator-metal type capacitor with the prepared composite exhibits the unique and photosensitive capacitive behavior at various light intensities in the visible light spectrum. The proposed photoreceptor mimics the spectral sensitivity curve of human photopic vision. The hybrid nanocomposite is stable in ambient air for 129 weeks, with no observable degradation of the composite due to the encapsulation of hybrid perovskites in the hydrophobic polymer. The functionality of the proposed photoreceptor to recognize handwritten digits (MNIST) dataset using an unsupervised trained spiking neural network with 72.05% recognition accuracy is demonstrated. This demonstration proves the potential of the proposed sensor for neuromorphic vision applications.